Fragment 22

Sappho, Fragment 22, from
If Not, Winter (Anne Carson)

“The spirit moves, but not always upward…”
[Theodore Roethke, “Meditations of an Old Woman”]

a.

waking this morning, an arm would not work

sleep & weight had robbed it of its force

it only took minutes to return at the elbow, then the wrist

a look in the mirror showed:

sleep left heavy lines across my face

if not today, what is winter?

temperature falling through the afternoon,

wind nearly silent through thick glass,

no pain afflicts the body

but much is seen, in its waves

because I prayed for clarity

this word: patience

I want to feel you near me

b.

there is only so much one can stand: work

satisfies until it doesn’t.

which face will show this morning:

the one that is impatient? enthusiastic?

exasperated? content? if not winter, when

will the prizes arrive? certainly not spring.

No pain without desire.

Is this because I prayed for accolades?

I should have never heard this word: ποιϝέω.

I want to be silent.

c.

being here with you is never work

(always home)

I never fail to see us both in each face

(the three boys who won’t stay still)

we will stay close, if not, winter,

no pain can preserve us from time

because I prayed that they would grow,

this word: patience &

I want, I want, I want

them to slow down

d.

work stacks & family holds

this face knows all four seasons

(if the spirit moves)

what is premature spring if not winter?

there is no pain if no loss,

all is temporary anyway:

(if the spirit moves)

because I prayed for happiness

this word: expectation

I want & must endure the spin

of gain & loss & loss & gain

(if the spirit moves)

Direction

In the beginning: oppositional Mars was not more than a pink speck, slightly larger than the rest, in the East above my neighbor’s house.

Somewhere down a long, familiar road an old love appeared new in the odd Winter's half-light. Falling in love with the shape of a tree in February has as much to do with skyline, the distance beyond, a cut of light, & sky so pink it might be flesh, as it does with the way the skinny bones reach out to embrace their own emptiness, want of nest, bloom, leaf, or errant kite.

But here, in this hurtling car, my sounds are less than nothing: beat, breath, synaptic fire: silenced by the friction of rubber & road, glass & wind.

(Suddenly, I recall the almost visible ribbon of geese I heard in last night’s darkness, still calling, now more necessary, perhaps, as their bodies blend into the midnight, blue-black vacancy. Is it wind they follow, or are they pushed by a force they do not know, a stream, though invisible, that they are more comfortable swimming in? They were gone as quickly as they arrived. Silence persists.)

Here, now, Mars, moon & Venus all down, or at least invisible, the meditation ends as one last streetlamp extinguishes, the trail of its light a chromatic halo, ephemeral, like a last note of birdsong or the final syllable of a hummed matin.

And I am alone again with all my doubts, all my loves, intact.

For Love

For Love

What the mind idealizes & the body desires,

something unknown accelerates, keeps, & makes last.

Some call it soul,

others heart or spirit,

but by whatever name

(& all words lack something essential)

it preserves, persuades, & protects.

It is there in the patter of a child,

in the needful relief of travel,

& in the shared glance of any given day.

It is the promise that makes forever possible;

It is the excitement of knowing one thing doesn't disappear.

______

Here's a link to a poem I wish I would have written: "Bird-Understander" by Craig Arnold

Here's a link to the Creeley poem that got mine started: "For Love" by Robert Creeley

Caliper

(for Brian)

"The cemetery expands its borders—
little milky crosses grow like teeth.
How kind time is, altering space
so nothing stays wrong; and light,
more new light, always arrives.”
[Spencer Reece, “At Thomas Merton’s Grave”]


What instrument do we use
to measure the capacity
of one’s character to
absorb loss?

The lies we live with
slide smoothly down the rule
only when the points
take & hold, without
slipping.

Then one day the beam breaks:
& every measurement is off.

------

I thought I'd always measure loss
on the little silver Mezurall
my father left in a drawer
(for me?)

It's in another drawer today,
(I kept it in a pocket for a while)
but I should have known:

Its length was never going to be enough.

-----

Your sister let each of us who were to carry you pick a pair of your socks from a plastic bag on the day we buried you. I chose Da Vinci’s calibrated man with his legs stretched into a pace that I'd never be able to keep.

-----

A life is lived on a hinge
that swings between eras
of unequal lengths & depths.

Sometimes it is a simple wind
that turns the gate between identities.

Then, again, storms destroy
what seemed so likely to stand,
so solid,so protected,
so easily measured.

When things finally settle again
& what’s left is gathered:
there is usually enough
to build the world again.

But once the rule is broken:
the measurements will
never again be exact.

88 Words

We arrive here improvised. [Szymborska]

Schedules persist whether we mind them or not. Thursday waits for no one. On a Wednesday two boys were born. Today was Wednesday, but the world lost a quiet poet. She survived more than her share. Sometimes one wonders if Saturday will ever come again. Or if Monday doesn't end soon, will all the artists stay home to save their cats from empty apartments. As it is, I'd rather be stunned by Sunday's silence: hear that? No, it was nothing, only one more minute clicking away.Tomorrow. Already.

Anecdotal

alone for an hour,

a strange-warm

winter Sunday,

a handsaw &

headphones,

we made a

renegade

tree disappear,

but the sapling

trunks, five in all,

at the place they

were the thickest

remain undug,

another day’s

tool & time.

…

together an hour

winding through

grocery aisles,

we two & the

wee one gather

future meals

brave  the hectic

crowds, borrowing

time from tears

that  (lucky us)

never come:

we fill a cart

with food,

with plans,

pay the tab,

load for

the unload

& put away.

…

shipping the troops

outside for an hour

a snowless deployment

rare in January:

left to their own

devices: grey sidewalks

graffito’d a winter blue,

a hill race on foot,

red bike turns,

brotherly taunts,

wrestles & rolls

in the brown

& sleep-full grass.

…

this is what it means to share an imagination:

the imagery of possibility: of unwarped cubits,

the momentary escape into the lion’s roar of labor:

throb of forearm, the aching cramp within the glove,

the shared but dreaded rituals of domestic life

turned magically into a game of hide & seek,

the pride of witnessing the brotherly bond

exult in its freedom to create & to break down:

to know that what grows must change,
that change creates loss as it provides gain,

to learn the patience of long love,

through the slow victimage of growing old

but most of all, learning the easiest lessons last:

that the anecdotes of memory are all we carry through,

that nothing remains but what is loved well,

that innocence is possible when the right task meets the right moment:

nothing teaches virtue better than the story that can’t be told,

the story that gives & gives & knows no proper way to end.

Departure

"My friends stood in a line and waved good-bye as long as they could see my back." [Basho, The Narrow Road]

Maybe it is loss that breeds
a need for absence, a going
that suggests distance & time,
when so many days end in a slipping away.

If I can imagine a line of friends,
loved ones, the marginally close
lining up to bid farewell, do not
mistake it for a death wish,
or a longing for the inevitable rise & fall of disease,
but a silent need for an appreciation
only recognizable through sustained longing.

Maybe not longing exactly, but being missed,
having the shared space emptied,
not breaking the vessel, always fragile,
just on the brink of disrepair,
but leaving behind footprints & a bit of dust,
knowing that I'd come back,
if only for the clutter, but not soon,
not too soon.

A decade is a considerable time to live in the same somewhere:
to occupy a house, to work a room, to wander a hallway.
Though dreams arise, fall, & reemerge, a made place must change or be left behind.

There is a second image lingering somewhere behind these lines,
the portentous one that tries so hard sometimes to become fact:
a family gathering their most precious cargo, strapping down what they love &

heading down some road that promises a fulfillment that their going toward brings.

Love Poem, December 1st

I am a seabird, you are the Arctic Ocean
I know your seasons, and your sanctuaries
And when I’m wheeling over your wild white horses
I know there’s nowhere else that I belong

[Stornoway, "Cold Harbour Road"]

The view from up here, soaring,
the view as only a sleeper sees,
not what is given for viewing
but what is wakefully missed
though unavoided, yet unseen.

Here your body curves into sleep,
the perfect contour, familiar lines
etched into my sleepy mind
wishing these wings were hands,
I'd give all this watery world for an island.

But to wake would be to fall,
to fall would be a graver loss,
a loneliness more pitiful than
even birdsong out of season,
hidden still behind skeleton trees.

To be awake, to be alone,
when the house sleeps,
when our children purr out dreams,
when even the coyotes stop their howling:
this is the time to hover above & look & look.

If you knew how I saw doubt disappear at each tide:
the breath's rise & fall through this not quite longest night,
through this beautiful untouched quiet,
you'd understand the more:
what this collection of feathers means to me.

Leaf Smoke, Sun Streak

Day 30, The Last

Not until this moment,
the sky impossibly coral streaked
& filled in by downy cloud,
did I accept the end of  another year.

Some of what goes up does not come back the same:
the leaf that fell now rises as smoke,
its rustle now crackles,
its color now roasts,
& its rust smells of cherry, oak, & smoky peat.

soon, I know, the cold rains will come,
the leaves' revenge, the end of fire,
the long sleep of seed & soil,
until the green fuse lit:
pop of bloom, crack of ice, hum of bird return.

but now, this evening that holds the cold away at a flames length,
a sky beholden not to art,
there is no sense in holding on to the past,
just being here now, just seeing & smelling
the end of another season is enough to settle this month's doubts.

Seasonal Invective Confession

Day 29

Everybody knows that September is the month for dying 

& October for being born. It's already November, 

already another number past the biblical midpoint, 

another pile of pages past the midterm, 

& again the worry of a wasted life 

still hammock free & temporarily hawkless.

What do birds know about disillusion anyhow,

that they show up to ghost a disenchanted morning?

What do they know of misplaced dreams, 

ill-timed despair, or the hunger of another plan?

They know the migratory urge, the seasonal pangs,

the Attic need to roost, nest, dally, & fly.

This is November. I know this feeling welling:

not regret exactly, but reproach, a weariness

of purpose that never works out as planned.

Is it that November is the polar twin of May:

the return of illusion with the migrating birds?

If only it was as simple as lift, flap, & glide.

Then again what do birds know about deadlines,

about stacks of unloved paper-hearted words,

about rushed poems that cannot find their ends?